I loved and hated this book. As Daryl Conner makes absolutely clear at the start, it is a book written for leaders. It raises the spectre of chaos” and then, in a detailed and erudite exposition, provides the best” way to beat back the frontiers of darkness. It sucks the reader in to a well-structured and powerful view of the (changing) world in which it is possible to understand and control chaotic existence.
For those who can see the abyss, for those teetering on the edge, and for those who have already fallen into its depths, there is still hope. This hope comes in the form of a new perspective on leadership for this new age of change. (p. ix)
The book is split into six parts, with nineteen chapters and three detailed appendices. The first part argues that, because the speed of change is increasing, organizations need to be “nimble” (which is likened to athletic prowess) to succeed (by which is meant “to become the market leader,” see p. 46). Part Two talks of the need to create the nimble organization, and explores concepts such as chaos (which is presented as the opposite to order), future shock (as the area between chaos and order and the optimum area for agility and growth), discontinuity, and paradigm shifts. Part Three details “Human Due Diligence™,” which “encompasses gathering information, planning, and engaging in actions related to the impact change is having or will have on an organisation’s human capital” (p. 105). Daryl Conner has trademarked this concept and it forms the meat of the book. In later chapters, Human Due Diligence is directly compared to “change management” and indirectly compared with “human resource development.” It is presented as a “paradigm leap” (p. 102) from these old concepts, though I am not so sure. More on this later.
In Part Four, Conner shifts focus away from the conceptual building blocks toward what is needed to build the nimble organization through Human Due Diligence. Nimbleness is not presented as a fixed quality— an organization is nimble if it is better than its competitors. The message is that the decision must be taken and resources have to be invested because the alternative is chaos: “Winning the new change game first requires a committed choice to deal with the human side of change (p. 108) and requires a significant investment of resources” (p. 121). He then examines leadership styles in depth, and though he is careful to say that no one style is the best, they are presented and discussed hierarchically, with only that at the apex (which he calls the continuous leader) having “no known weaknesses.” Parts Five and Six pick up some of the loose ends, such as “fine-tuning the nimble organisation,” looking at empowerment, structure, and the development and maintenance of the “leader.”
The whole book is well written, lucid, and contains many interesting vignettes that give good illustrations of the complicated world of work, the sorts of decisions that have to be taken, and the leader’s role within this—it gives a firm feel of the many challenges faced in a changing environment. In addition, nearly every concept is broken into subsets and stages such that a detailed, complicated, multiply linked and well- ordered picture is presented. This structured approach can be a bit over-bearing. For example, within the first few pages, we are given eight aspects of change, three change domains, three aspects of successful organizational change, two illusions of change, three factors of change, three realms of change, four layers of change, and three forms of knowledge about change. This starts to feel rather like reading a detailed set of overhead projection slides and reminds me of the adage: “a place for everything and everything in its place.” This helps the reader become rapidly involved with the author’s world, but the root of part of my problem with this book is in this very persuasiveness.
The world that is created in the book is not my world. I am an unfit female, I often work in nonprofit environments and money (and its substitutes) don’t particularly dominate my life. In Daryl Conner’s ideal world (as presented in the book, anyway), leaders are fit and hairy- chested men who need to win, and the only thing that really matters is market success. Metaphors about competition and fitness permeate the book, and physical fitness is explicitly linked with good leadership (see p. 193). In the whole book there is only one case of a female leader (Mary, on p. 32), but, poor thing, she is in a bit of a state! Despite the persuasive rhetoric, I cannot identify with the book. Clearly, this is my problem— and it is also likely to be a problem for you if you are similar to me. However, if you do see yourself as a fit, competitive, male leader seeking free-market domination, then you should be able to identify with the book easily—it is unashamedly written for “leaders of men” and does this job well.
Although the book is written for leaders (i.e., practitioners), it claims to advance the area theoretically, following years of research. The ideas are drawn from several fields (i.e., management science, psychology, anthropology, group dynamics, change management, human resource development) and these are blended together well, such that many of the issues central to complexity theory are addressed. In my opinion, however, despite its claims, the book is not really aimed at advancing theory and does not do so, and the concepts involved are not used consistently or rigorously.
Much of the theoretical exposition hinges on the existence of a continuum between order and chaos within a complex world, yet, in my view, what is really meant by this in the book is a continuum of order and disorder in a complicated world. Despite the rhetoric to the contrary, the practical recipe given for success is that we “choose” our destiny as if choosing a path from a world that is mapped out in front of us, and, having chosen, “lead” change by following a rational progression of stages, such as: “A decision to intentionally raise the organization’s adaptation capacity must be made far in advance of the rising tide of change” (p. 126), with little or no allowance for continuous feedback or flexibility. Indeed, the highly ordered nature of the book and the qualifying world (by which I mean a world of right and wrong ways of doing things) created by it attest to the strong desire within it to control and order disorder, rather than to live on the edge of chaos. Similarly, we are introduced to the fundamental and schismatic nature of paradigm shifts, and Human Due Diligence is propounded as a paradigmatic leap. Yet what is really meant by “paradigm” is something much more mundane and common: it would appear that organizations comprise many paradigms and that we can change these as we would change our clothes. Concepts such as “paradigm” and “strategy” have long histories and deep, contested meanings, yet they are bandied about here without discussion or questioning.
The book might, therefore, be seen as an introduction to complexity thinking, but, if so, I still have quibbles with it. First, many ideas are used but they are not attributed. By this I mean that each notion is presented as “the truth”—not as someone’s opinion that can be questioned and investigated further. The reader is given no idea where each notion has come from, and although there is a list of further readings at the back of the book, the majority of these come from the 1980s and early 1990s and do not represent the state of the art.
I associate this level of laxity with “faddism,” yet the book is very hard on other fads such as business reengineering, change management and self-organizing teams, suggesting that Human Due Diligence is fundamentally different.
The boundaries between change management and HDD ... represent the bridging from one change era to the next in the evolutionary development of the capacity we humans have to direct our own destinies. With the rise of HDD comes the beginning of a new framework for the leadership and orchestration of human variables associated with organisational transformation. (p 334)
I agree with much of what Conner says about the nature and role of what he calls Human Due Diligence—I just don’t agree that it is new or that it offers a unique solution.
Regardless of what we call this process, I don’t think I would like to be part of an organization built by it. I am sure there are many leaders for whom the resultant organization would be Nirvana; however, I am not so sure that would be the case for those they were leading. The book suggests that the vast majority of staff need to be fit for their job (hired for it or fired if not). Only the fittest, as defined by the god-like leader, survive! Furthermore, a precondition to the “successes” of Human Due Diligence is a “significant investment of resources” (p. 121). Do not most initiatives (whatever they are called) succeed if provided with sufficient resources?
Perhaps it is I that do not understand the book, as Daryl Conner says that “the only leaders who will really experience, to its full extent, what this book is trying to convey are those who are already unconsciously competent at the stated objectives” (p. 73), or, perhaps, I am asking too much of the book—it does what it claims, which is to talk “leaders” through “change.” Perhaps notions of leadership that involve the god-like man out front are antithetical to the theory and practise of complexity. The nature of such leadership is to simplify and make safe, while living in a complex world is to float in the unsafe and unpredictable.
In conclusion, therefore, I loved the way in which the book laid open such a tortuous area in a clear and simple, well-written and thorough way. I loved the world of order and rationality that it created in a life of disorder and complexity. I hated it for exactly the same reasons.
MONICA LEE
Daryl R. Conner states in his preface: “If the traditional way we have thought about implementing change is no longer valid, what will take its place? The honest answer is that no one really knows exactly. The framework that will accommodate this kind of turmoil has not yet fully materialized. What we do know is this: The experience of organizational change is no longer what it has been, but neither has it become what it will be.”
Whatever that last sentence is supposed to mean, at least he takes an honest stab at creating that “framework.” Conner’s book is filled with solid advice as to how managers and those in support of them need to proceed in the forming of mutually supportive organizational relationships and problem-solving structures and it is sound and well illustrated with anecdotes and charts. But there is nothing about any of his counsel that would have surprised any good manager of the Industrial Age. What is so special about these tried-and-true examples that helps us “ride the whirlwind,” as his publisher puts it, of the rapid changes of the Information Economy today? Conner doesn’t say.
Every sailor knows that the sea is always full of waves, but there are techniques of seamanship that come into play based on variables such as wave height, the length of the boat, and its source of power. Other than stressing that the manager must recognize that he now exists in an envi-ronment of constant and increasing turbulence, hardly news after the past decade, Conner has no specific conclusions to share with us about how to implement change—just as he warned us in the preface.
This is a trait that he has in common with many other gurus on management, covering various areas of management more persuasively the more detailed they get. But the gestalt, or general outline of the problem being confronted, gets lost or isn’t even addressed. As we have seen in the Kosovo mess, the military five-paragraph field-order format often succeeds or fails on its first paragraph: the definition of the mission itself. The other paragraphs become effective in their detail in proportion to the success of the statement of the mission that they are to implement. There are many fine examples of organizations that have proven themselves “nimble” enough “on the edge of chaos” to move from pipeline companies to cable, from mainframes to networked PCs, or from dedicated sys - tems to Internet bases. Mighty Microsoft’s massive makeover in response to the challenge of the Internet itself has to rank as a classic model. But there is no examination of instructive examples such as these in this book.
At the edge of a new millennium, as the latest books filled with management tips appear daily, one might well consider a tip from the 150- year-old Alice in Wonderland. It’s hard to think of a more turbulent environment filled with chaotic change than the “Wonderland” into which young Alice fell. Faced with choosing a fork in the road ahead, Alice poses her predicament to the Cheshire Cat lounging on the branch of a nearby tree: “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where,” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” replied the Cat.
Management gurus can learn a lot from the Cheshire Cat. Things always appear pretty puzzling—even chaotic—to those who don’t know where they are going. It remains impossible to divorce the techniques of management from an analysis of the destination. As Conner points out, good leadership creates a “journey” in which growth takes place, as opposed to simply managing a “trip” made up of travel alone.
THOMAS H. LIPSCOMB